New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA)                                     

I am writing to you after learning that your prestigious Institute invited British journalist and author Michela Wrong to talk about a controversial topic titled “Rwandan Genocide: Lessons learned”; a lecture scheduled on Thursday, May 9, 2024; and “Rwanda: African Policeman or Regional Troublemaker” scheduled on Monday, May 6, 2024.

I am a concerned survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

I wish to bring to your attention that although Wrong poses as a journalist with vast experience in Africa, and an author, the reality is that when it comes to Rwanda, her work is politically motivated and misleading.  

She only qualifies as a political propagandist against the current Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and the ruling party RPF-Inkotanyi.

Wrong has, for many years, been working to tarnish the image of Rwanda and the country’s leadership.

What Wrong writes about Rwanda, like in her book “Do Not Disturb”, and other articles in the Global North media, is fully biased against Rwandan leadership. 

Wrong is a genocide denier working closely with terror groups like the Rwanda National Congress (RNC).

According to Genocide scholars, for every genocide that has taken place in the world, there are people and organizations that have come up to defend the perpetrators by denying their responsibility in genocide, and instead blaming the victims.

Wrong is one zealous genocide denier obsessed by accusing President Kagame and the RPF of every immoral thing she can think of or imagine.  

Wrong is aiding the last stage of genocide, which is denial.

By blaming the RPF that stopped the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the intention is to turn genocide villains into heroes and Rwandan heroes into villains. 

She is in the league of friends of evil against Rwanda, and has traded her journalism ethics for lies and fictitious narratives that serve the interests of criminals who committed genocide in Rwanda, genocide deniers, Rwandan dissidents in exile, and others who propagate the double genocide theory.

Wrong belongs to naysayers who never see anything good happening in Rwanda or done by President Kagame. She invests time and money to find ways of twisting the truth and the good things happening to be seen in bad light.

When French President Emmanuel Macron visited Rwanda, in May 2021, Wrong knew the visit warmed up bilateral relations between Kigali and Paris.  To throw dirt on the image of President Kagame before the international community, Wrong came up with an Op-Ed in The Guardian, to coincide with the visit. The title of her article was; “The world is slowly waking to Paul Kagame’s brutal actions in Rwanda.”

When Karegeya died in South Africa and when Rwandan singer Kizito Mihigo committed suicide in a prison cell in Kigali, she was quick to blame Kagame and the Rwandan government without a grain of evidence. 

The planned topics of discussion at your prestigious Institute are other examples where she wants to create a bad image of Rwanda.

Wrong wants to undermine the visible successes that Rwanda has registered in bringing peace in different African countries such as; Mozambique, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and others. Rwanda collaborates with the African Union, the UN and the international community to carry out such missions. 

Rwanda’s military support stems from a bitter history as well as the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which is an international norm that seeks to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

To castigate Rwanda as a regional trouble maker only exposes Wrong’s bias and hatred towards the leadership of Rwanda.

The problems in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), started way back in the 1960s when Kagame was a toddler.

The Berlin Conference (1884-1885) that partitioned Africa, sowed the seeds of the conflict that is prevailing there.   Blaming Kagame for the troubles in the region only exposes Wrong’s lies and sinister motives.

In her work, Wrong strives to bias the international community about Rwanda, with the aim of seeing the country being isolated.

To the contrary, Rwanda is praised by the international community for putting financial aid to good use and pledges to give more. Wrong’s mind is corrupt and she no longer qualifies to carry the title of a journalist since journalistic ethics call for truth, accuracy, fairness and impartiality, which are visibly absent in her narratives about Rwanda.

Dear NZIIA Board Members,

Wrong is coming to your Institution at a time in Rwanda when we shall be commemorating 100 days of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi where more than one million innocent victims were brutally murdered.

For NZIIA to give a platform to a genocide denier and a propagator of double genocide theory like Wrong during our commemoration of the Genocide, it implies that your Institution is joining hands with genocide deniers and anti-Rwanda propagandists.

I believe that you, as the Board Members, know well that genocide is a crime against humanity and giving a platform to a genocide denier tantamounts to being accomplices in aiding the last stage of genocide, denial.

I want to bring to your attention that, in February 2021, Wrong attended a virtual event to commemorate the former head of Rwanda’s intelligence services Patrick Karegeya, who was among the founding members of the terrorist group, RNC, who was later murdered in a hotel room in South Africa.

Fact is that Wrong was an intimate friend of Karegeya, a fact that she does not even hide in her book, “Do not Disturb” when she describes Karegeya as having “smooth honey skin.”

Even the title of her book is derived from the message that was hanging on Karegeya’s hotel room door. With no evidence or any court ruling, Wrong trades her journalistic ethics to political interests and blames the government of Rwanda for the murder of Karegeya.  

Wrong was praised by members of RNC for being their strong supporter “to keep their story alive”.

Wrong acts as a hired anti- Rwanda advocate and is making money through selling her book which is full of lies against Rwanda and President Kagame.  She recycles fictitious narratives and ‘testimonies’ gathered from Rwandan dissidents and genocide suspects.

Her autobiography was edited by another notorious genocide denier -  Rene Mugenzi who was convicted in the UK in October 2020 and sentenced to 27 months in jail for stealing more than £220,000 from Norwich Roman Catholic Cathedral where he volunteered as its treasurer. Mugenzi is also a known compulsive gambler.

Dear NZIIA Board Members,

In order to protect your own reputation and that of NZIIA, I wish to request you to cancel the planned event with Wrong and stop all other collaborations with her.

Her genocide denial actions are cynical and hurting us as survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. She is dancing on the graves of over one million Rwandans who were brutally murdered. She is a liar who has turned it into a profession to tarnish the image of President Kagame and Rwanda as a country.

I thank you for your attention and understanding,

Michael Nkurunziza

A survivor of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

CC:

Hon. Christopher Mark Luxon

Prime Minister of New Zealand

Hon. MPs New Zealand Parliament